The History of Pooping on El Capitan, By the Decades

It’s not talked about much, but everyone must poop—even the climbers on Yosemite’s El Capitan. It is not an easy task, especially with a harness on. For some, it can also be socially awkward to take care of your bodily functions while hanging on the wall next to your climbing partner.

Pooping on a wall is not like hiking, where you can wander off to get some privacy. Suddenly, your partner needs to re-organize the rack or rustle around in the haul bag—anything to reduce the awkwardness of someone pooping in a bag right next to you.

I have guided climbers on multi-day ascents up El Cap many times and poop was the one thing that worried my clients most. Many decided it was too embarrassing or too difficult, so they would try to hold it in for the whole climb. It was always quite amusing to see someone reach the top, tripping as they frantically took their harnesses off and ran for the woods.

Pooping on El Cap By the Decades

1950s and 1960s: Figuring It Out 

El Cap saw its first ascent in 1958 via the Nose by Warren Harding, Wayne Merry, and George Whitmore. They spent 47 days spread out over a year and a half on the wall. Four years later, the wall got its first repeat, and two new routes appeared left of the Nose. Throughout the 1960s, the Nose, the Salathe Wall, and the Dihedral represented the most common routes. By the end of the 1960s, seven routes existed on El Cap.

During these early days, when long weeks were spent on the wall, we tied into the end of the rope with a bowline knot, and eventually, swami belts. In other words, no leg loops of any kind like a modern harness. It was nearly impossible to breathe when hanging on your waist.

To take care of bodily functions, it was almost mandatory to have one’s feet on the rock and lightly lean back against your waist harness to take care of business. It would be even better if you had something to hang onto or brace yourself on, like a big hold, a ledge, or the rope. Warren Harding and crew used the very west end of Texas Flake, mid-way up El Cap on the Nose, for their main bathroom. The flake gave them privacy. But it also kept the route cleaner as they pushed higher, fixing ropes and stockpiling ledges with supplies. Though traffic on El Cap was so sparse during the 1960s, that poop wasn’t yet problematic.

1970s: The Shit-Anywhere Decade

Because El Cap was climbed relatively rarely decades ago, not much thought was put into pooping. In 1970, Harding and Dean Caldwell climbed the Wall of Early Morning Light, spending 27 continuous days on El Cap. Ambitious climbers started filling the gaps between existing routes and pushing right into overhanging terrain. I personally did four El Cap routes in 1977. Only during one of those ascents did I encounter another party on the wall. It was still relatively rare to see any climbers while climbing El Cap, let alone more than one party. Compare that to the 40 parties simultaneously on El Cap during peak season these days.

In the `70s, climbers pretty much went number two wherever they happened to be on the route when they had to go. They counted on the next rainfall to clean it up. If you had the luxury of a ledge, you could lean way back against the rope and cut it loose. If you were on overhanging rock, you had to pull your ropes up first to get your gear out of the line of fire below. Wind could also be a factor.

Considerate climbers would go out of their way to hang off to the side of the climb to take care of business so as not to soil the route. Others wouldn’t. The biggest faux pas was to go in a crack behind a ledge. People sleep on these ledges, and there is nothing worse than the stench caused by someone too lazy or scared to take care of it properly.

The worst example of this issue lies at Camp 6 on the Nose (VI 5.14a 2,900ft). It has been a problem for years. We have had to clean the poop from Camp 6before during a Yosemite Climbing Association Facelift clean-up event.

This laissez-faire approach to poop worked for quite a while without being too big of a problem, unless you were climbing a route right behind someone.

1980s: Beware of Falling Paper Bags 

By the early 1980s, climbing was getting a lot more popular and big walls were in vogue. Poop was becoming a problem, both on the routes and at the base. I am not sure how this phenomenon started, but during this decade, climbers started crapping in paper bags. El Cap climbers would toss their shit-filled paper bags off the wall, hoping they would reach the base. Climbers used to call these poop-filled bags “mud falcons,” but I find the term crass and disrespectful to falcons.

Paper bags offered a slight amount of protection if the bag brushed a climber on its way to the ground below. It became a fun challenge of sorts to get your paper bag to clear the wall—and the people below.

After the climb, you would walk along the base and pick up your waste-filled paper bags. By then, the turds were mostly dried out and easier to deal with. It had always been a habit to walk the base after a climb anyway to pick up anything that may have been dropped. Often you were rewarded with dropped climbing gear that we called booty.

As more people began climbing El Cap, the shit bag situation became a problem. It was so bad that you could not avoid walking by them. While camping on Grey Ledges, a narrow shelf on the Triple Direct route, a friend of mine asked his partner to pass the food bag. Almost immediately, a bag landed on his lap while he was sitting in his sleeping bag. He thought “Wow! that was fast.” He opened the bag up and looked inside to see what was for breakfast. It was a poop bag that had been tossed by someone on the Shield. Thoroughly grossed out, he threw it off his lap. After that, my friends never used paper bags to store their food again.

The poop-in-a-paper-bag method continued into the mid-1990s.

The 1990s: The Cautionary Tale of a Suspect Poop Tube

In 1996, the Olympics took place in Atlanta, Georgia. During the Games, a bomb went off and the incident put the whole country on alert, with terrorism on their minds. The Hetch Hetchy valley in Yosemite’s northwestern corner became day-use only because the area provided water to the San Francisco Bay Area and you had to show your ID to get in. Around the same time, the National Park Service (NPS) imposed a law requiring climbers to carry their excrement with them and dispose of it properly after the climb.

At the time, I was working as a climbing guide for the Yosemite Mountaineering School. One day after work, I was heading home to El Portal where I lived when I encountered a traffic jam in front of Camp 4. Both lanes had come to a total standstill. Drivers were becoming impatient, including myself.

An NPS ranger started approaching, asking folks in their cars to be patient and turn their cars off. When he got to me, we recognized each other, and chatted for a bit. I asked him what the hold-up was, assuming it was a bad car accident or rockfall. He said they were waiting for the bomb squad to arrive. I thought, “Wow! This is getting interesting.” I asked some questions, and he elaborated on the situation.

Apparently, someone had reported finding a three-foot length of four-inch PVC pipe, threaded and capped on both ends. The pipe was found leaning against a dumpster in the picnic area at Manure Pile, a buttress just east of El Cap. Visitors panicked and park authorities evacuated the area. Rangers then stopped traffic on North Side Drive until the bomb squad could arrive and defuse the bomb.

I started laughing and said, “You’ve got to be kidding me! If you let me through, I will defuse it for you. It’s a poop tube. Some climbers left that there. That is where the descent off El Capitan ends.”

The ranger looked at me skeptically, like I was a freak. He was not sure what to think about this conversation, so he moved on to the next vehicle. To his credit, carrying your poop off the wall and disposing of it after was a relatively new law. And not a lot of NPS employees understood much about climbing.

Eventually, the bomb squad arrived, and they used explosives to defuse it. Much to their amazement, it was not a bomb. Lo and behold it was a poop tube. When the squad blew it up, the pipe flung poop everywhere. It’s hard to believe that was almost 30 years ago. If they had let me through, I could have saved them a lot of trouble.

Present-Day El Cap Poop Innovations

To date, the rules have not changed and climbers are still required to package it up and dispose of it properly after the climb. People have had to improvise storage containers—and poop tubes are heavy.

As many climbers ascend routes more quickly these days, teams may not need the capacity of a large PVC poop tube. Some have turned to dry bags to store their waste. Others slice open two-liter water bottles, fill them, then seal them shut with duct tape. Many have had to improvise when they’ve forgotten necessary receptacles. One time, an unprepared friend of mine had to use an empty can of beans. Not only did the can opening prove a little small, but it didn’t seal well either.

An experienced wall climber will bring baby wipes. They are handy for cleaning up and, as a bonus, they also protect hands from aluminum oxide. Wag bags are available these days, offering a much better, less aromatic solution. These can be sealed and put in a container.

Dealing with poop responsibly on big walls may be a hassle, but it’s the right thing to do. We need to be considerate not only to other climbing parties, but also to the environment. If it all seems like too much, you could always do what all the youngsters are doing these days. Climb it in a day and avoid the problem altogether!

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